日本語

Moving pictures were not an American invention; however, they have nonetheless been the preeminent American contribution to world entertainment. In the early 1900s, when the medium was new, many immigrants, found employment in the U.S. film industry. The major studios were located in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, California.

During the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, the studios were cranking out a total of about 400 movies a year, seen by an audience of 90 million Americans per week.

The studio system succumbed to two forces in the late 1940s: (1) a federal antitrust action that separated the production of films from their exhibition; and (2) the advent of television. The number of movies being made dropped sharply, even as the average budget soared, because Hollywood wanted to offer audiences the kind of spectacle they couldn't see on television.

From the late 1960s until the end of the 1970s, American filmmaking underwent an extraordinary renaissance. One reason for this renaissance was that, with the advent of the counterculture, the major Hollywood studios were no longer certain about what sorts of movies would make money or about what the new, young audiences who came of age in the 1960s wanted.

Films of the past 15 years, although mostly financed by Hollywood, are exceedingly offbeat, a testament to the variety of American filmmaking. One important reason for this eclecticism is the impact of smaller, semi-independent studios - like Sony Pictures Classics and DreamWorks - that specialize in producing or distributing avant-garde movies.

So while American movies are undeniably commercial enterprises, there is no inherent contradiction between the desire to make a profit on a film and the yearning to create a work that is original and provocative.

• eJournal "The Movie Business Today"
• The Arts in America: Films - Movies and Modern America - DOS IIP, U.S. Society & Values Electronic Journal, April 2003
• A Centennial Salute to Cinema The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History
• The History of the Discovery of the Cinematography
• Earlycinema.com:An Introduction to Early Cinema
• Exporting Popular Culture - Movies - DOS IIP, Portrait of the USA, this section provides a history of the movies in America
• Origins of American Animation

• American Film Institute
• Early Motion Pictures - American Memory Collection
• Film Publications and Resource Guides
• Film Resources US Library of Congress, National Film Preservation Board
• Hollywood.com
• Internet Movie Database
• Internet Public Library: Movies
• Motion Picture Association of America
• Narrative Television Network (NTN)
• Oscar.com: The Official Academy Awards Site
• Sundance Film Festival